Movie Review: Wreck It Ralph

Wreck It Ralph is the latest in a long line of animated family films that seeks to entertain the whole family and succeeds hands down. The visuals, story, dialog and pace of the film will appeal to kids while parents, particularly those that grew up pumping coins into video game machines in arcades, will be taken on a joyous trip down memory lane.

The story starts with Ralph, the villain of popular 1982 video game Fix It Felix Jr, attending a Villans Anonymous meeting and sharing with the likes of Pacmans Ghosts that he doesn't want to be a bad guy anymore. The references in this scene alone will have dad reaching for his latest copy of Retro Gamer. Ralph continues to feel on the outside within his game as all the 'good' guys in his game party together in their game while Ralph is consigned to sleeping in the garbage tip. This all comes to a head when Fix It Felix Jr holds an anniversary celebration for his game and Ralph is not invited because the games other good guys are scared of him. Ralph, quite literally, crashes this party only to bet old that he will never be a good guy. How can he be if he can never win a Gold Medal like all good guys do? This sets Ralph off on a quest across a number of video games in search of his gold medal to prove to his companions that he too can be good. Soon Fix It Felix Jr realises he has no game without Ralph and sets off to find Ralph in order to save his game (no pun intended). To say more about the plot would be to rob you of the films magic. Suffice to say that the collection of characters they meet along the way are all fully realised and brilliantly propel the story forward. Sarah Silvermans character is a particular highlight.

Wreck It Ralph manages to address a number of themes such are being accepting of people who are different to you, the dangers of pursuing popularity at any cost and even political ideas such as the increase of violence in video games without ever being heavy handed or taking away from the fun of the film.

The films running time flew by and when the lights in the cinema came up my 5 year old son and I left having probably watched two very different films both of which were worth 5 stars.